Staff meetings are in full flow again for this year’s event.

Since we had new staff members and also people coming to observe, we ran “speed dating” so that everyone could talk to many new people in just 20 minutes.

Then we worked on planning for the new pre-event in June, where this year’s international groups will be announced. For internal consumption only, Ian introduced the planned groups to staff.

WMDF is still recruiting staff. If you have an interest, please come and check out our gatherings. The next meeting is on Wed 27 May at 18:30 at Hakodate’s Machi-Tsukuri Centre.

WMDF is already working hard on its 008 event, and on finding new partners to work with us.

As part of this, WMDF visited Hokkaido University of Education Hakodate campus on April 17 (Fri). GIA presentative, Ian Frank presented our activities and roles of staff through pictures and video. Students who joined us last year as staff also showed up and helped us out.

If you are interested, there are staff meetings announced on these pages. For more information on registering to get automated emails, check out “Take part as WMDF staff” on our homepage. It’s also possible to attend our meetings as an observer, if you just want to find out what everything is about.

By the way, on the same day in the evening, we also held a “Core Meeting”. These settings bring together the sub-group leaders of all the important groups that work to implement WMDF to make plans and to check and generate ideas. This time, we focussed on the 2015 Pre-Event, the “Worlds Meet Circus”, and we think we came up with many promising directions.

Time will pass fast, but we will try to make this another memorable year. Why not join us?

To mark the success of this year’s event, WMDF has produced and circulated a newspaper-style report.

You can view the full text by clicking on the image below (Japanese, pdf file, 1.2M).

The main points:

• Despite the daily rain (and two typhoons), we ran for the full 6 days.
• We brought our participant country count to 42.
• We hit almost exactly our target of total 30,000 audience, despite only being able to run one stage on the final day.
• Mogu Mogu Festival booths passed 50 for the first time.
• 20 million yen turnover passed at Mogu Mogu Festival for the first time.
• The Waku Waku Festival debuted successfully, bringing yet more worlds for you to meet at our event.

The newspaper has been sent to sponsors, Mogu Mogu Festival stall representatives, and many other places around town. Many thanks to all for the continued support to keep our event growing and representing Hakodate and Japan on a world stage. We are already looking forward to next year!